Vasile Dudeanu

"We weren't given any water except for a bucket of water per day, which would of course get dirty - we would take turns: someone one day, someone else tomorrow - and when the bucket was full, we would take it outside. When you grabbed the handles, you would get dirty from all that dirt, no matter how much you tried not to shake it, it was still full, so you got dirty anyways. We were only allowed outside half an hour a day for a walk. They would take us outside in the prison yard of Jilava, make us stand in a line, one behind the other, without looking to the left or right and without talking to each other. We would walk around in circles for half an hour together with the guard. If you dared to open your mouth, the guard would swear at you and snap you, and would then get everybody back inside. We were young and we managed to cope. But there were also older people who would get tired. There were priests, ministers, officers, doctors, all kind of people of all ages."

"I: Being surrounded by intellectuals, especially by our teachers, we learned foreign languages, mathematics, each with his area of expertise. How did we do this? We would put DTT (which we were given against lice) in a bag or in a handkerchief, then soaked the bottom of the dish (that we received for eating and washing), smeared it with soap and used the handkerchief to spread the DTT dust - it would turn into slime. We would strike the spoons we used for eating with a stone the best we could, so they would turn into some sort of knives, which we then used to sharpen little sticks we could use for scratching that slime. We wrote our math lessons or other things we were taught like this. When we heard the guard, we wiped off what we had written. Or when the bread arrived. Before bringing us the food, they would give us a bread cut in quarters. It was cut in quarters because it was round. We organized ourselves in the cell like in a committee. We even had a chief of the room. We received the bread at the door because they wouldn't let us go any further. Together with other brothers in pain, we would go and take the blanket with the bread. We then shared the bread among groups of four. Because it was never enough, to avoid the hunger obsession which we all felt, we would give out numbers: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four... so in groups. We would take one bread, the quarters were, of course, not cut equally. R: A smaller piece, a larger piece. I: And then, every day, we had like a scale, also made out of a wooden stick, with two thorns and a thread. We would push the stick inside the bread and weigh the pieces, the first one in line would then receive the largest quarter of bread. The next day it was someone else's turn to take the largest piece. We would take the bread one after the other, one, two, three, four - the last one received the smallest loaf. And the last one was first in line tomorrow, you know?"